“Trains of Our Thoughts”: A Special Blog Plug

What Bicolano doesn’t miss the Bicol Express (not the watered-down dish that had appropriated its name), the Mayon Limited, the Peñafrancia Express, the Manila Railroad Company, the Sleeperette, the Mercancia, the “railroad towns” of Camarines Sur that the Manila-bound train from the Legazpi Terminal of the South Line passes in the middle of the night and the drowsy passengers wake up to the glare of florescent lights and to the shouts of “Balut, penoy... sinapot, tubig...” or whatever goody or curiosity it was that the vendors were hawking? What Bicolano doesn’t grimace, or not feel his blood boil, as the train passes the shanties near Bicutan hemming in the decaying tracks and the roofs of the decrepit coaches are crowned with human feces and garbage, and curses under his breath the government that inflicted this malignant neglect on their beloved train? (Well, to be fair, the tracks are actually being, and finally, rehabilitated under an international loan, under whose terms the railroad area must be cleared of squatters, and the rich squatters have just actually torn down their concrete "shanties"—some of them have occupied the place for maybe 30 years, and conducted profitable business while paying "rentals" to "squatter-coddlers" at rates that cost almost nothing and cheated even the neglectful government—I know because I live near the place.)

Poet Vic Nierva

These are the trains of thoughts one might find at, or be triggered by, the newly-launched blog, Trains of our Thoughts, created by Bikolano award-winning poet and graphic designer Vic Nierva, a native of Lupi, one of the “railroad towns” in Camarines Sur. “A weblog of tales, verses, and images on railroad life in the Philippines,” Vic says in the announcement email he sent out last October 19. When I surfed the site, I found Vic’s first posting, “The Many Stories of A Train Station,” with these opening lines:

“Manila-bound train Peñafrancia Express passes by our town of Lupi at nine in the evening, at the time when the moon was gently waxing over the silhouettes of hills and coconut groves. Against darkness, one could only imagine the intense color of the fire tree blossoming or the downy kapok fibers falling from the dried fruits still attached to the branches. By that time, the old train station was quiet and almost empty except for frequent bystanders, or sometimes, passengers from nearby villages who slept on the cold concrete benches waiting for the early morning train to Naga or Legaspi. The florescent lamps of the station were the only remaining illuminations reflected in the night skies and all the rest was a small pastoral town deep in slumber...”


Visit the site if you want to read more. The blog, which is not so much a blog as a real and earnest heritage journal, at least by intentions (it’s on its first posting, as far as I can tell), has been adopted and hosted by the Railways & Industrial Heritage Society of the Philippines, Inc. (of which I’ve heard for the first time), and rightly so. Here’s Vic’s email in full:

Dear Friends,

I present to you a weblog entitled "Trains of Our Thoughts," a weblog of tales, verses, and images on railroad life in the Philippines.

This concept is a product of an online conversation between Bikolano poet Frank Peñones and yours truly after talking about the condition of our railroad industry—forgotten, rusting, and corrupted. Perhaps, by testaments and memories of people on their own experiences of of train travels or life along the tracks, we may be able to remind everyone of the heritage of our railway and how it helped establish places, cultures, identities along the way. By such manner, our words or images may be able to make our authorities aware that there is a need for our railway industry to be developed to serve more people.

This also comes with an invitation. "Trains of Our Thoughts" is open for your stories, essays, poems, and photographs. When we are able to collect significant number of contributions, we envision that "Trains of Our Thoughts" will be published as a book. Please send your contribution to my personal email address with "Trains of Our Thoughts contribution" as subject.

Presently, "Trains of Our Thoughts" weblog is hosted by Railway and Industrial Heritage Society of the Philippines, Inc. (RIHSPI, http://rihspi.org) so that its address maybe accessed at http://trainsofourthoughts.rihspi.org/ or at its original address http://trainsofourthoughts.blogspot.com/.

Please help spread this news to your friends. Thank you very much!

Vic

There. You now have several links to be clicked on this page. You know what to do. If you’re Bikolano, read or contribute your “Thoughts” or both, if you’re non-Bikolano but interested in trains (who isn’t), the same. By all means reminisce your childhood trip in a faraway land and era (Bikol is now more and quickly accessible by bus), or fulminate against the perpetrators of this ignorance of our heritage, economics, and neglect. But click and view the weblog, whatever your memories. And this is why Trains of Our Thoughts deserves to be read, and why you may have read about it for the first time here. And look at those train stop ads (to the left, you don't have to read the text, just the headlines), are they from another planet?

PHOTOS & IMAGES: (from top) Boy & Train by Santiago Bose; the header image of Trains of Our Thoughts, the Naga City station in the 1960s, and the two facsimiles of Manila Railroad Company (MRR) ads (top ad dated 1923 and lower ad 1921) are courtesy of RIHSPI but taken from Vic Nierva's Trains of Our Thoughts and Makuapo ni Handyong blogs.

UPDATE: The painting by Santi Bose, with my poem "Boy & Train by Santi Bose," now appears as the second posting at the Trains of Our Thoughts weblog . Thanks, Vic.

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